Projects/ClimateNet

Project name

Energy neutral internet café

Members

Key members: Tim Garbos, David Kofoed Wind

Other organisations: UNF, Roskilde Festival, YCC

A team of 10-20 people on the project, but not everybody is involved with the OLPC or the software for the café

Charbax ( http://charbax.com/ ) has also shown interest in the project.

Percent already completed

We're still in the planning fase, so I'll say about 10-15%

Deadlines

• 17. april: 2 XO-computers for configuration and research.
• 24.-26. april: Roskilde on tour 1.
• 1.-3. may: Roskilde on tour 2.
• 15. june: 10 Laptops for Roskilde Festival.
• 15.-28. june: Configuration and final setup of laptop for Roskilde Festival.
• 28. june - 5. july: Roskilde Festival.
• 5.-13. july: Finishing and evaluating the project.

Project plans

Background

The COP15 climate conference will be held in Copenhagen this year and therefore is the Danish Youth Association of Science focusing on organising climate events and workshops, in order to make people aware of the climate issues. We're an association dedicated to promote the interest of the sciences and technology, chiefly among youth. Among other things, we host science-related lectures each week, along with summer camps each year. One of these climate events will be at the Roskilde Festival.

Roskilde festival is the largest North European culture and music festival and will this year focus on climate responsibillity. Global climate changes are happening and they are some of the biggest threats to the world. UN's climate experts recommend immediate action if the most severe consequences of human emission of greenhouse gasses are to be avoided. Therefore, Roskilde Festival 2009 is focusing on the global climate. The campaign is called Green Footsteps and focuses on how Roskilde Festival  can shoulder our part of the responsibility for solving the potential climate catastrophe by involving the 75.000 festival guests and making them aware of the issues. Also Roskilde Festival has a general humanitarian focus and the profit is donated to humanitarian projects.

Roskilde Festival is one of the biggest media/press events of the summer. (In Nortern Europe)

Project

Our concept is to create a free internet café that uses only human powered energy. in short a co2 neutral internet café. Imagine a tent with 10-25 OLPCs, only powered by the people who use them, being used for browsing the web, sending emails, and talking with friends and family.  The computers will be loaded with games and programs related to climate issues or solution. We have already a few early versions ready for the website. We will also have an online mini survey about the climate (and maybe also about the OLPC if possible).

The tent will be filled with info about our other projects, the climate issues, and I'm sure there's room for some info on the OLPC too.

With the approximately 75.000 festival guests and a huge press/media coverage we intend to promote the OLPC as much as possible, by showing it's potential.

Technical details

The goal is to power the OLPCs with hancranks, but other human powered generators such as bicycles will also be tested. A more detailed documentation will be available when we have an OLPC to test it with. The software, which includes small climate related games and applications will be written in Python (pygame) and Flash.

All sourcecode, documentation, and other useful info will of course be released under an open source license.

Goal

The primary goal of the internet café is to make people aware of the climate issues, and demonstrate how much you can do with self generated power.

A secondary goal will be demonstrating the OLPC and making people aware of it. Not only it's low power level and other technical capabilities, but also it's educational value. 

The outcome of this project will not only be concrete documentation on how to hand power the OLPC, together with sourcecode for our software and other changes. It will also be a lot more people aware of the OLPC and what it's capable of. 

Organizations behind:

UNF (The Danish Youth Association of Science) UNF is an organisation for people with a particular interest in science. The purpose of UNF is to promote science to youth and give already interested youth an opportunity to get an insight into today's science which the school usually is unable to give. More information at: http://www.unf.dk/english.php

YCC

The Youth Climate Conferences is the first world event dedicated to visualize the views and the concerns of youth regarding the climate issues by regrouping the voices of youngsters from every part of the globe to state their opinions in unison.  In the end of 2009, world leaders are going to sign a new treaty to protect our climate at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP15) at which YCC will state its opinions. More information at: http://ycc2009.org

Roskilde Festival

Roskilde Festival is the largest North European culture and music festival and has existed since 1971. We are a non-profit organisation consisting of about 25 full-time employees and thousands of volunteers.  Each year, The Roskilde Festival Charity Society, which is the association behind Roskilde Festival, ensures that the profits from the festival are donated directly to humanitarian and cultural purposes. More information at: http://www.roskilde-festival.dk

Roskilde on tour Roskilde Festival has arranged a bus tour all around Denmark to show of some of the better projects of the festival. Our project have been selected for this tour. This means that the XO will be displayed all around Denmark in a mass media event!

Number of Laptops that we need

25 for the actual festival period (But project is still durable with less, even though the outcome will of course be limited) 2 for the developing and testing period

Number of months that we expect the project to take

4 months. but the laptops for the café will only be needed for a limited time period (about a month) A more detailed projectplan will be available soon.

Description of your experience, both with hardware and software.

Tim Garbos, Student of B.Sc IT in Software Development

David Kofoed Wind, Student of B.Sc Eng in Software Technology

A team of 10-15 other skilled people.

Game development camp for years

We've organized the biggest European Game Development Camp, where we among other things have educated participants in game programming using the open source tools Blender and Python. The concept for Game Development Camp is gathering approximately 70 high school students, with interests in game development, from all over Scandinavian. Each participant have been part of a team to create a functional game in less than a  week, while recieving education in everything from graphics to programming. Last years games is published under an open source license and available at: http://game.unf.dk/games2008.php

Robot camp

Robot Camp is similar to Game Development Camp, but here the focus is building and programming robots. We've been educating people in basic robot constructions and programming of these robots to solve simple problems or avoid obstacles.

Programming workshops

We are regularly organizing workshops in game programming and robot programming.

Other technical skills

Some of us have been working with administration, configuration and management of Linux servers.